Friday night I drove down to the South Bay and stayed with my mother since she lives in San Jose which is only about a 45 minute drive to Hollister. David planned an official ALC training ride of 55 miles from Off the Chain Bikes, so I volunteered to help co-lead.
The sky was looking ominous, but the forecast said the wind and rain wouldn't hit until the afternoon so we decided we'd go ahead and ride, cutting off a 10 mile loop and hopefully getting us back in before the storm hit.
David, Rick and I were TRLs, Kumar, Natan and Kim were our newbie riders who braved the windy hills with us. And it was wiiiiiiiinndy! Like "blow you over" windy! Our first major climb up Cienega Road was not so bad until we hit the winds near the top of the hill. After that it was sort of cross windy until we took a right onto Old Airline Hwy and hit the headwind DEAD ON. Talk about stopping you in your tracks. All I could do was put it in granny (on a majorly FLAT road) and spin until I got to the end of the road where I made a left and that major headwind became an AWESOME tailwind!!LOL! I'm talking pushing me along the road at 37 miles an hour--- without me even pedaling a stroke!
Soon we were blown to our lunch destination, the Paicines Market in Paicines. They have the best burritos-- good nourishment when you've been fighting headwinds all day. Normally I can only finish a half a burrito there. Today I was in the middle of a conversation with David and Kim, looked down at my burrito and there was just a teeny piece of tortilla in my hand (I had inhaled the whole thing without looking at it!)
After lunch we headed up the biggest hill of all, a road called "Quien Sabe", which in spanish means "who knows". Well indeed who really knew what we were in for? The first part of the hill had a cross wind, the second part, a tail wind and the final climb was a cross wind so fierce I had to keep my head down and just look at the white line on the shoulder of the road while I pedaled.
At one point I looked up ahead and saw that Kumar was walking up the hill with his bike. Kumar walking up a hill??? Unheard of! I slowly road up to him and asked him if he was ok and he said that the wind had blown him off of his bike! I turned to him and asked, "REALLY?", and as I did that the wind blew on my front wheel catching the bladed spokes, causing the handlebars to turn right and effectively turning me off the road and into the soft grassy (luckily) shoulder. I looked up at Kumar and said, "... you mean like that?!". We both started laughing hilariously! Needless to say I got off of my bike and started walking up that hill too, only to have the crosswind gusts blow so hard (I swear they had to be 60mph winds!) that my bike was trying to fly up in the air sideways. The same thing happened to Kumar a couple of times, so with a hilarious bout of laughter we pushed down on our handlebars and top tubes to keep the bikes from flying away, while walking up the rest of the hill.
Once at the top we met up with Rick and Natan who both had the same experience. The wind gusts were crazy but we waited there until we saw Kim and David nearing the top, both also walking their bikes.
Once descending, the wind was at our backs for most of the rest of the route. We stopped before the next turn that would take us into town, Rick and I waited for Natan and then for Kumar. The four of us looked at the sky and determined that we were going to get rained on for the next 5 miles, but that was ok-- we were close to town. We looked back and saw no sign of David or Kim but we figured they were together (and David of course, knew his way back) so we rode on.
The rest of the ride was a little trafficky- I won't tell you about the part where I blanked out and got the "horse to the barn" syndrome-- forgetting to come to a complete stop while I was with Kumar. (He can tell you the story). Other than that it was a pretty uneventful ride back in the rain....
But the wind I will never forget, nor watching Kumar's bike fly in the air!!
